Reading stuff can be a chore. When you landed on this page,
chances are the first thing you did was skim it quickly – perhaps subconsciously
– to assess whether the benefits of staying and reading might be worth 10 non-refundable minutes of your life. Most of us have opened a lengthy text-dense
email only to recoil in horror and close it again hurriedly, never to return.
For the writer this can be a big problem. You have so much to tell your would-be reader, but by putting it onto a page you risk frightening them off. So what to do?
Readers fall into two broad categories – those who want to read what you’ve written and
those who have to read it (perhaps because
it’s their job). Your challenge is to convert the latter into the former. Strategies
for tempting your reader in – or at least not frightening them off – and keeping
them reading go well beyond the content itself. This blog post will look at one
essential strategy: using white space to make your pages more inviting.
The inviting page
Cast your eye over this
page and take in its structure and elements. It has a title and subheadings, multiple
short paragraphs, a bulleted list and a couple of images. And between all of
these, something of almost immeasurable value – white space. Picture your reader as an explorer, surveying the
vista ahead of them. Can they see a clear pathway, a navigable route to their
destination that avoids impenetrable jungle and doesn’t look too exhausting? White
space will do this for your page. A liberal sprinkling of nothingness.
White space is easy, right?
Including white space on your page requires no special technical
skills or arcane knowledge. It’s not physically demanding and it takes no extra
time. It’s not a limited resource, and there’s no financial cost to using it. Why
then do so many grant-funding proposals include almost none of it?
OK, so I’m being disingenuous. I know why not – page limit.
Almost every funder restricts the length of proposals, either by way of a word-count
(or character-count) limit or a page limit. And if you’re limited by number of
pages then the first thing that goes in the bin is white space. Margins as
small as permitted, line spacing as narrow as it will go, super-long sentences
instead of bullet points, no space between paragraphs. As for subheadings…
Surely funders need all this detail?
Your research is really important to you. It’s a very big
part of your life. You think about it a great deal, you spend a lot of time
planning and doing it, and you’re confident that it will make a real
difference. It really interests you – if it didn’t then you wouldn’t do it.
Unfortunately, almost
none of the above applies to the evaluator. They have many things in their
lives that are more important to them than your proposal. They have very
limited time to read and understand it. And they’ll approach it with a jaundiced
scepticism borne of reading dozens of proposals promising to change the world.
Funders know this, and they know they’ll never recruit any evaluators if they
make the job too onerous. So they try to keep it as quick and easy as possible.With this in mind, here’s a multiple-choice question. Funders and their evaluators would prefer you to:
A: Shoehorn half as much detail again into the maximum page limit –
a time-consuming double whammy of more stuff to read in a format that takes ages
to plough through
B: Provide enough information to fit comfortably within the maximum
page limit, presented on pages that won’t make anyone’s eyes bleed
Ummm... Put simply, if the funder wanted 15 pages worth of
information then they’d specify a 15-page proposal. Rather than, say, eight.
This may sound fine as a general rule, at least in theory.
But sometimes you just need to
provide all that detail so the evaluator can really understand your proposal. There’s just so much to tell and
it’s all so important – surely they’ll
appreciate the extra information?
Well, my nine year old often ‘submits proposals’ to me. She often
thinks I need lots of detail to be able to make the ‘right’ decision. But there’s
no correlation between proposal length and success. Consider the following
examples:
“Dad, I’ve been talking to Phoebe and we’ve been thinking it would be a
great idea to have a sleep-over tonight, I know it’s late and you and Mum are
tired but we’ve thought of that and we’ll move the beds around ourselves and we’ll
go to sleep early I promise, remember last time Phoebe had a sleepover we were
really good and if you say yes I promise I’ll be really good again not just
tonight but tomorrow in fact all week, oh go on please please please, and tomorrow
morning can we have pancakes for breakfast?”
“Dad, could I stay up for an extra 10 minutes tonight to practise the
flute for tomorrow’s concert?”
Getting more nothingness into your writing
Once you’re on board with the difficult concept that less is
actually more when it comes to funding proposals – and I mean really on board – then the great news is that it’s pretty easy to
incorporate extra white space into your writing. Here are just a few suggestions:
- Use reasonable spacing between lines – ideally at least 1.15 – and never be tempted to reduce line spacing just to fit more onto each page
- Keep paragraphs short – try to stick to one point or thought per paragraph
- Insert a clear line of space between paragraphs
- Use headings and subheadings, put them on a line of their own, and try to keep them short
- Use bulleted lists when you’re listing multiple points – ideally with no more than three to five items – rather than long sentences with commas, colons and/or semicolons
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog.
